He studied successively at Saint-Louis de Gonzague in Paris, the Free College of Gien (1919–1925) and Prytanée National Militaire (1926–1928).

This force was landed at Saigon between 10 and 15 October 1945, and was immediately deployed to recapture Mỹ Tho in the Mekong Delta from the Viet Minh.

F-84Fs also hit two large oil storage tanks in Port Said, which went up in flames and covered most of the city in a thick cloud of smoke for the next several days.

[2]: 61  Derek Varble, the American military historian, later wrote "Air support and fierce French assaults transformed the fighting at Port Fuad into a rout".

Massu's division was sent to Algeria in response to a wave of armed attacks and terrorist bombings coordinated by Algerian FLN.

In Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 film The Battle of Algiers, a controversial depiction of the events in Algiers between 1954 and 1957 banned in France for five years after release for alleged pro-Algerian leanings, the principal French character Col. Mathieu is a composite based on Massu and several of his subordinates, likely including Roger Trinquier and Marcel Bigeard.

[3] The Algiers putsch of 1958 began when the current government suggested that it would negotiate with the FLN, bringing the instability and ineffectiveness of the Fourth Republic to a head.

On 13 May right-wing elements seized power in Algiers and called for a Government of Public Safety under General de Gaulle.

[4] The putschists threatened to conduct an assault on Paris, involving paratroopers and armoured forces based at Rambouillet, unless Charles de Gaulle was placed in charge of the Republic.

[7] Massu retired from military duty in July 1969 and spent the rest of his life in his home at Conflans-sur-Loing writing his memoirs.

On 15 June 2000, Louisette Ighilahriz, a woman who had been a member of the FLN, accused Massu and Marcel Bigeard in an interview published in Le Monde newspaper of being present when she was tortured and raped by the French Army at a military prison in 1957.

[8]: 234  Bigeard by contrast called Ighilahriz's story a "tissue of lies" designed to "destroy all that is decent in France", going on to say this "Richaud" had never existed.